TCHC could net $13M from 22-house sale

Case Ootes, Toronto Community Housing’s one-man board, will consider Wednesday morning a proposal to sell off 22 properties in sore need of repair at his first meeting since taking the helm.

Located on some of the hottest real estate strips in the city, the single family homes could net anywhere from $13.4- to $15.7-million, according to staff at the housing authority.

If approved by council, the move would also replace seven rent-geared-to-income units with rent supplements, an approach the city has previously endorsed when it approved the sale of five other houses that would be too costly to patch up.

“The sale of the 22 houses has a very clear financial benefit to Toronto Community Housing that will be applied to capital repairs for existing multi-residential buildings,” a report prepared by staff says. The TCHC has a $600-million repair backlog.

The properties for sale are scattered all over the city, on Crawford Street, Logan Avenue, Davisville Avenue and abutting the lake with million-dollar views.

On Wineva and Hubbard, properties have sold for more than $1-million.

“It’s right on the water, and that’s very rare in the city of Toronto,” said Desmond Brown, a real estate agent for Royal LePage Estate Realty in the Beach.

Most of the tenants in the 22 houses pay market rent and 15 units are currently occupied.

While the sale of these properties had been contemplated prior to Mayor Rob Ford’s election, housing advocates say it is no surprise that TCHC is going down this route now.

Case Ootes favoured selling off some of the 550 houses the TCHC owns when he was a councillor, and Mayor Ford has expressed his preference for shifting to a model in which the city subsidizes rent in private buildings, instead of building more stock.

The vast majority of subsidized units in Toronto are in apartment blocks owned by the public housing authority, but a few thousand residents already get rent supplements to live in pre-approved private buildings across the city.

Housing Connections administers the program with 130 private landlords, while the city works with non-profit housing providers.

Rent subsidy advocates say the approach gives renters more choice, while skeptics say it is fraught with challenges.

Michael Shapcott, an expert in affordable-housing issues, says many governments have expressed interest in rent supplements as the solution to their housing woes but few have committed to any kind of serious experiment.

“In terms of rent subsidies versus acquiring or building housing in the short term, the dollars do seem better,” said Mr. Shapcott, director of affordable housing and social innovation at the Wellesley Institute.

“The reality is that over time the cost of subsidizing a tenant living in a private rented building more than outstrips the cost of building more housing.”

The business case might be made for the sale of homes that are too expensive to fix, but Councillor Janet Davis (Beaches-East York) believes the TCHC should be holding on to houses in order to accommodate families.

One published report described the plight of a widow, who lives on Hubbard Boulevard in the Beach, where homes have sold for more than $1-million. She had been facing eviction, despite a council motion reportedly approved in 2001 granting her permission to stay indefinitely because of her age. The TCHC issued a statement Tuesday saying it would honour previous commitments.

Earlier, Councillor Doug Ford said he laments the elderly woman’s situation, but looked at the bigger picture.

“Nothing is fair. It’s not fair to the taxpayers that she’s living in a million home, too. I feel sorry for her, my heart goes out to her, but I could take that million dollars and build four other homes and house four other families,” said Councillor Ford.